EC-US task Force on Biotechnology Research, Workshop on Standards in Synthetic Biology, 4-6 june 2010 - Spain

The Workshop is organised as a high-level EC-US discussion on how scientific and engineering research might be best coordinated in order to understand, refine, measure, and, as possible, standardise biomolecules and systems in support of their broad application. From one perspective, new tools such as de novo genome construction are challenging synthetic biologists to become 100s of times better at reliably programming the functional molecular elements that comprise cells. From another perspective, the complexity of biology continues to challenge systems biologists to develop physical representations of cellular behaviour that transcend the simple recapitulation of past observations. How can we best work together across both sides of the Atlantic to increase our capacities for understanding and engineering biological systems at the genome scale?